A shipment of more than 100,000 testing swabs arrived in Ontario contaminated and unusable, the Star has learned, illustrating how even as the province strives to expand its COVID-19 lab-testing capacity it is still contending with global supply-chain havoc wrought by the pandemic. Without the federal order, the province currently has about 200,000 swabs on hand, enough for seven to 10 days’ worth of tests, according to provincial officials. Ford promised a “vast and robust testing regime” for COVID-19 at a press conference Friday. Before shipments of swabs are deployed to assessment centres, they have to be validated by Public Health Ontario’s laboratory. The Star couldn’t confirm the manufacturer of the contaminated swabs, but supply chain challenges generally during the pandemic have meant that governments are turning to new, and potentially unreliable, manufacturers to meet their ballooning needs.

Source: thestar April 10, 2020 21:33 UTC